D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."

I'm A Banana said:

Which gets back to the main thrust of my point: the rules are no less or more flexible than the setting material is.

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For the meaning of 'flexible' implied by the rest of your post, yeah, ok. But I think this tends to head toward glossing over the fact that people can have significantly different expectations about when and how changes are made to rules vs. lore.

So in contrast to the OP, I'd say that lore is rules, and rules are lore: a change to one is no more or less dramatic than a change in another.

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Um, no. Just. No. Two things sharing an attribute does not make them the same. Maybe that is not what you meant, but it is what you said. Sort of. Actually you said "A is B and B is A", but then both immediately before and immediately after you refer to them as if they are separate things. (?)

Ok, enough beating you around the head and shoulders.

As for me, when I hear/read the word "lore" I think of statements about the fiction phrased solely in terms of the fiction. When I hear/read the word "rules", I think of mechanics - statements about abstractions of the fiction particular to a game system. And then there are correspondences between abstract game elements and the fiction. I usually think of those as "rules" also, although one could treat them as a separate category if that were somehow useful.

Now one could use the word "rules" to cover all of the above, but

1. then you need some other word to mean what I mean by "rules" because there are situations in which distinguishing that as a category is useful; and
2. if you want to make the point that "lore" and "rules" (as defined here) are equally important, or equally useful, or share some other attribute, it is not necessary to claim that they are the same thing or even that one is a subset of the other. They can be distinct things while still sharing some qualities.

The discussion of comparing the Realms and Greyhawk brings up an aspect of lore and canonicity that hasn't been touched on much here, at least explicitly: the matter of tone. Which is even more elusive than the other things that comprise lore, but I think no less important when you're taking player expectations into consideration.

WotC characterizes the Realms as a high fantasy setting, and Greyhawk as a sword-and-sorcery setting - which is probably more or less in line with the intent of their respective creators. So even though they have a lot of the same kind of stuff in them, the stories that happen in them are intended to feel different - maybe subtly so, but distinctly. That seems as much a part of canon as anything else, at least in terms of something you want to be aware of if you're going to change it - in the same way that Middle-Earth and the world of The Black Company don't have anything like the same tone to them, even if they superficially share the same kind of set dressing. They're worlds that are fueled by different isotopes of narrativium.

Ilbranteloth said:

Yes, it's not really as important to the setting, but it's one of many little things that makes the Realms what it is.

When did you start playing in Greyhawk? Because prior to the release of the Realms, all my campaigns were in Greyhawk (not much choice back then, but we enjoyed it). The world is much more a collection of quasi-feudal states and the politics more akin to the wars that you see in something like Game of Thrones. Far less magic, in both the types of spells, types of magic, and quantity of magic items. Even following the Greyhawk Wars supplement, the world has a much darker feel, kind of like late Dark Ages vs early Renaissance.

That doesn't mean your Greyhawk has to be that way, but that's the sense I always got from the design.

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Our Greyhawk game has been going on for at least the last ten years (maybe longer) but the DM has been using his Greyhawk world for much longer then this campaign. One of the major changes introduced into the game was allowing Warforged as ancient devices uncovered in the area where we started the campaign. The DM just uses the standard magic item distribution so I never noticed a particular lack of magic in the game.

As for the darker feel, I am not sure really. I mean we are in DnD land so basically non-stop fighting off one enemy or another. Greyhawk is certainly a target rich environment.

Personally, I don't think I understand the point of view to which the OP is a response. Rules and lore are both parts of the game to be enjoyed by its participants, but that is the extent of their similarity.

Lore relates to the setting of a particular session of roleplaying, and tells us what exists and what has happened.

Rules are the system by which the particular session is played, and tell us what happens as a result of play. Lore doesn't do that unless it has been codified into a rule.

They aren't the same thing at all.

Hriston said:

Personally, I don't think I understand the point of view to which the OP is a response. Rules and lore are both parts of the game to be enjoyed by its participants, but that is the extent of their similarity.

Lore relates to the setting of a particular session of roleplaying, and tells us what exists and what has happened.

Rules are the system by which the particular session is played, and tell us what happens as a result of play. Lore doesn't do that unless it has been codified into a rule.

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There are various uses of "lore" and "rule". I think lore - as in element of the shared fiction - can be, or give rise to, a rule - as in a directive that governs the play of the game. But it doesn't have to. The converse is also true.

Lore equivalent to (or entailing) rules
For instance, it could easily be a rule that no dwarves may be wizards (by default, classic D&D has this rule). Is that "lore" or "rules"? Well, it's a directive with which game players are expected to comply - hence a rule. And it establishes some backstory - hence lore.

What about "that blue dragons come from the desert"? That seems like "lore". It can also be a rule, though - eg in some games it might govern the way the GM is allowed to frame encounters ("No blue dragon encounters in the middle of a swamp!").

On the other hand, that the dwarven kingdom to the north is called Forgehome (a solid, Dwarf-y name) seems like "lore" - as in, a piece of backstory local to this game at this table - but not a rule. (It doesn't really tell anyone about what they can do in PC building or encounter framing or action resolution.)

Rules equivalent to (or entailing) lore
Most players encounter the classic D&D restrictions on magic-user weaponry as a rule (daggers only! or daggers, staves and darts, but definitely no swords!). But clearly it produces lore, in the sense of gameworlds in which wizards are never equipped with, or fight with, swords and maces. Hence the many discussions about how one might model Gandalf's use of Glamdring within a D&D framework.

Similarly, the fact that magic-users/wizards can't get healing magic like clerics can is normally first encountered as a rule; as part of learning the PC building rules and the spell lists associated with various classes. But it is also a major contributor to D&D lore - everyone knows that if someone is hurt you don't visit a wizard's guild, you go to a temple!

In worlds that use Rolemaster mechanics that same bit of lore doesn't get generated, because as well as clerical healing RM has a core Lay Healer class (analogous to a psionic healer in D&D, but the latter has always been optional, and most D&D worlds don't factor in psionic healing as a core component in world building).

On the other hand, here's a rule that probably doesn't entail some lore in any straightforward way: the old success-chance-by-level table for thieves. Another one might be the healing rules in 5e (some players interpret them as showing that, in the D&D world, recovery from injury is magically fast; some interpret them as showing that hp loss doesn't typically equate to significant physical harm; others just ignore or handwave the whole thing).

MichaelSomething said:

Gold for XP <snippage> and kingdom building were all rule things designed to enforce a certain game flavor.

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These are examples where the rules don't quite entail some particular lore - so they're not quite the same as the "wizards can't use swords or cast cure spells" rules in that respect - but the rules tend to engender, through play, lore which has one sort of content and/or tone rather than another.

Other rules that I think fit into this general category are those that tell you whether it is hard or easy to take prisoners; whether monsters tend to attack or (as in classic D&D) have a reasonable chance of being friendly; whether evasion of pursuit is easy or hard; whether defeat of the PCs means TPK or being taken prisoner for ransom; etc.

Vincent Baker wrote some interesting posts about this in relation to Lamentations of the Flame Princess: he was expecting one sort of thing out of the system (moralised horror) but the system (PC building, resolution mechanics, other stuff that he had trouble pinning down) pushed the game in a different sort of direction that he sums up as "Vance . . . [and] his ironic, cynical relativism".

robus said:

Surely it's as simple as "the lore informs the role play" I.e. It provides context & richness to play off of.

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One function of lore can be to "inform roleplay". But "inform roleplay" has different meanings.

Consider the suggestion on another thread that an ogre encounter might begin with the ogre throwing a half-eaten cow carcass at the PCs: the GM is using the lore to inform the set-up of the encounter. It's colour (or, if you prefer, flavour) that provides richness to the encounter set-up. But it probably doesn't inform the resolution of the encounter: eg nothing significant would change about the encounter if it was a half-eaten bear rather than a half-eaten cow; or even if the ogre through a log instead of a half-eaten carcass.

Another use for lore to "inform roleplay" - one that I myself prefer - is that the PCs are defined not just in mechanical terms, but in the relationship to certain elements of the shared fiction. So that the choice of how, in fictional terms, an encounter is set up by the GM doesn't make a difference just to "colour", but also to the sorts of goals the players choose for their PCs in relation to the encounter, and/or the way they actually engage the encounter via their PCs. A classic example of this is when (say) the ogre is really their dwarven friend who has been the victim of a polymorph spell. Now the players (in character as their PCs) have a reason not to want to kill the ogre, even if the ogre (with mind addled by the polymorph) is trying to kill them.

At least in my experience the more that a RPG group uses lore in this sort of way, the less the game has of "McGuffins", "sidequests", "fetch quests" and the like - stuff where the lore is colour but is not essential to the way the players engage the game and make their decisions - and the more it will be a sort-of dynamic back-and-forth between the players and the GM, as the players send signals about how/why the lore matters to them (and their PCs), and the GM uses that to inform the framing of the challenges that confront the PCs (and, thereby, the players).

Remathilis said:

"why bother?"

Lets pretend for a moment you plan on using Eberron as written, but changing the backstory to something totally different. You still have necromancer elves, dinosaur-riding halfling barbarians, the twelve nations (including one that is destroyed by magic and almost Mad-Max like), the dragonmarked houses, artificers and magewrights, Sharn, the City of Towers, warforged, shifters, kalashtar, psionics, scorpion-focused drow and Xen'drik, and the faiths of the Sovereign Host, Dark Six, and the Church of the Silver Flame, but everything has a different background than the one presented in the ECS.

I ask, what is the value of that? Why create an alternate history that gets you EXACTLY to the world described in the ECS? Sounds like an awful lot of work just to reinvent the wheel.

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Remathilis said:

if you're going to use parts of a setting and then rip the guts out of it to make your own, is there any value in using the Eberron name? Why not call it Lanefania and make it totally your own? I use canned settings to be lazy, if I want to build a whole new setting, I'll go the extra mile and make it my own creation rather than calling it "Greyhawk" or "Karameikos"...

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This was addressed in the other thread.

When I run a Greyhawk game, I use the GH maps. Now, I have a folder which has all my maps: from the original folio; from the City of GH boxed set; the City of GH environs map from FtA; maps from the Adventure Returns reboot, from the LGH gazetteer, from Iuz the Evil and the Marklands, etc. (But my From the Ahses world maps, and my boxed set ones identical to the folio ones but in better condition, sit on my shelf in plastic pockets.) When I'm running a game, I don't tend to worry too much about time period - I'll just pull out whichever map is at the top of the pile and has a helpful degree of resolution - because the differences across time periods often don't really matter to my game.

What the maps give me is a basic geography (physical and political) and some names to go with it. The centre of the maps, in particular, gives a lot of adventuring geography in a fairly small space - the Bright Desert; the hills north of that; GH city for European urban adventuring; Hardby and the Wild Coast for more Conan-esque, Zamora-esque urban adventuring; the Gnarley and Suss Forests; the Woolly Bay for ship-borne adventuring; Highport for slaver galleys; Furyondy and the Shield Lands for knights and paladins; and Celene, the Lortmils etc for elves, dwarves and other standard fantasy elements.

Why would I bother reinventing and renaming all this, when Gygax et al have done all that work for me?

But as far as history is concerned, I'll use the general tropes - ancient wars, Suel wizards who migrated east, etc, but won't bother with the details. For instance, I find the idea that GH's vikings are actually Suel migrants; or that the martial arts monks are actually survivors of the Suel Empire; too silly for words, and so I just ignore that stuff and use "real" (pulp) vikings and "real" (pulp) martial artists living atop a hidden plateau.

I've never had any issues with this. My players don't read reams of source books. They rely on basic tropes and themes and a quick Google. The maps fit what they find by Googling. Google will probably tell you that the king of Furyondy is a paladin, which tells you basically all you need to know about that. It will tell you that the Bright Desert is thick with Suel tribesmen, ready for some pulp-meets-Lawrence-of-Arabia action. Etc.

I've never read much Eberron, and have never used it. But I wouldn't be surprised by someone doing with Eberron more-or-less what I do with GH. And why do that rather than write my own stuff? Because it's easier. Someone else has come up with all the maps, names, basic outline, for me. That's what I'm paying them for when I buy a sourcebook.

Sticking to the lore, or sticking to the rules is all about control and consistency. Just note that you will stray from lore at the beginning of the game and remain consistent on how it applies, versus being a random ad-hoc fest to attempt to counter player control in regards to the setting.

pemerton said:

One function of lore can be to "inform roleplay". But "inform roleplay" has different meanings.

Consider the suggestion on another thread that an ogre encounter might begin with the ogre throwing a half-eaten cow carcass at the PCs: the GM is using the lore to inform the set-up of the encounter. It's colour (or, if you prefer, flavour) that provides richness to the encounter set-up. But it probably doesn't inform the resolution of the encounter: eg nothing significant would change about the encounter if it was a half-eaten bear rather than a half-eaten cow; or even if the ogre through a log instead of a half-eaten carcass.

Another use for lore to "inform roleplay" - one that I myself prefer - is that the PCs are defined not just in mechanical terms, but in the relationship to certain elements of the shared fiction. So that the choice of how, in fictional terms, an encounter is set up by the GM doesn't make a difference just to "colour", but also to the sorts of goals the players choose for their PCs in relation to the encounter, and/or the way they actually engage the encounter via their PCs. A classic example of this is when (say) the ogre is really their dwarven friend who has been the victim of a polymorph spell. Now the players (in character as their PCs) have a reason not to want to kill the ogre, even if the ogre (with mind addled by the polymorph) is trying to kill them.

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You once again seem to be allowing your biases to cloud the way you present things. You preferred style of "informed roleplay" is a good one, but in this case it has caused you to state the bolded above. The bolded portion may be true for your game, but it's not true as a general rule.

The PCs will have different reactions to a bear, cow or log. Those different roleplayed reactions add to the enjoyment of the game, which is significant. Also, the log would probably do more damage if it hit a PC, but the bear and cow carcasses would be softer and heavier, possibly landing on and pinning a PC for a time. That's also significant. A PC doesn't have to have a love for cows, a fear of bears, or have that log come from the PC's sacred grove in order to make that toss something significant. That's just how you like to see things done for your game.

Maxperson said:

You once again seem to be allowing your biases to cloud the way you present things. You preferred style of "informed roleplay" is a good one, but in this case it has caused you to state the bolded above. The bolded portion may be true for your game, but it's not true as a general rule.

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I'm going to be honest, I don't think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] have anything close to the same definition of "significant".

The ogre throwing a log that does 3d6 damage and makes the players say "Ouch, that hurts!", compared to the ogre throwing a cow for 2d6 damage and making the players say "Eww, that's gross!" isn't "significant" by my definition because the players aren't going to make different choices because of this information. Now, if the ogre is throwing orphans at the PCs from his bag of stolen children...that would certainly rise to level of "significant" information.

If you want to argue that "significant" means any information that impacts the narration in any way, or elicits a reaction from the players in any way, than we'll have to just agree to disagree on this semantic point.

TwoSix said:

I'm going to be honest, I don't think you and @pemerton have anything close to the same definition of "significant".

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Correct, but only one of us is dismissing all other peoples idea of significant. That's the point.